I am not an atheist, although I live my life as though there were no God.
I used to work in the main office of the church I attended as a kid. One afternoon, after the rest of the office staff had gone home, the doorbell rang, and I answered. It was a homeless woman. Not knowing what to do, I let her in, seated her in the waiting room, and called up the office manager. The manager, a gentle woman, told me she would be by in a few minutes to take care of it. When she arrived, she took care of the woman, providing her with gift certificates to a local grocery store, money for a night at the local motel, and reservation with a taxi company to get her there. After the homeless woman left, the manager told me that in the future, the protocol was to turn homeless persons away at the door, as there simply was not enough money to provide for everyone, and the church did not have a homeless shelter. I completed this task several times before leaving this job. Each time, I told the person at the door, “I’m sorry, we can’t offer you anything today.” As I would walk away, I would say a prayer in my head for that person, though I thought to myself each time how, if I were in that situation, I would rather have a few dollars for a meal than a prayer. I realized that I was using God to personally justify the existence of real world problems that I could help alleviate. For me, God was becoming an excuse for inaction.
I am not atheist, I have never claimed to be, I probably never will. I was born and raised in the Catholic Tradition, in the heavily Catholic Chicagoland area. I attended Catholic grade school and high school, and received formal religious education during those years. Though I respect most religious teachings as generally “good”, and have found nothing in my life that disproves the possibility of a God, I have since adopted a worldview where I live as though there was no God.
If I live under the pretense that there is no God, then all I have is the here-and-now, and that is all anyone has. This forces me to take a serious look at the society I live in, and takes away the idea that even though people may suffer in this life, they will be rewarded lavishly in the afterlife. Assuming that there is no God forces me to take some sort of real responsibility for the wellbeing of my neighbors, rather than relying on the idea of some divine intervention or Heavenly justice. The idea that “God will take care of him,” is irrelevant.
I believe that through living as though there is no God, I am most able to live the life and see the world in a way that an all-loving God would want me to.
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About Mike Chan: I was born and raised in and around Chicago, where I attended small Catholic schools before joining the CU Community. I am a third-year student majoring in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) with a minor in Biochemistry, and plan on attending medical school. In addition to academia, I am passionate about music, have played the violin, guitar, and piano, and am an avid concertgoer.
I am not an atheist, although I live my life as though there were no God.
I used to work in the main office of the church I attended as a kid. One afternoon, after the rest of the office staff had gone home, the doorbell rang, and I answered. It was a homeless woman. Not knowing what to do, I let her in, seated her in the waiting room, and called up the office manager. The manager, a gentle woman, told me she would be by in a few minutes to take care of it. When she arrived, she took care of the woman, providing her with gift certificates to a local grocery store, money for a night at the local motel, and reservation with a taxi company to get her there. After the homeless woman left, the manager told me that in the future, the protocol was to turn homeless persons away at the door, as there simply was not enough money to provide for everyone, and the church did not have a homeless shelter. I completed this task several times before leaving this job. Each time, I told the person at the door, “I’m sorry, we can’t offer you anything today.” As I would walk away, I would say a prayer in my head for that person, though I thought to myself each time how, if I were in that situation, I would rather have a few dollars for a meal than a prayer. I realized that I was using God to personally justify the existence of real world problems that I could help alleviate. For me, God was becoming an excuse for inaction.
I am not atheist, I have never claimed to be, I probably never will. I was born and raised in the Catholic Tradition, in the heavily Catholic Chicagoland area. I attended Catholic grade school and high school, and received formal religious education during those years. Though I respect most religious teachings as generally “good”, and have found nothing in my life that disproves the possibility of a God, I have since adopted a worldview where I live as though there was no God.
If I live under the pretense that there is no God, then all I have is the here-and-now, and that is all anyone has. This forces me to take a serious look at the society I live in, and takes away the idea that even though people may suffer in this life, they will be rewarded lavishly in the afterlife. Assuming that there is no God forces me to take some sort of real responsibility for the wellbeing of my neighbors, rather than relying on the idea of some divine intervention or Heavenly justice. The idea that “God will take care of him,” is irrelevant.
I believe that through living as though there is no God, I am most able to live the life and see the world in a way that an all-loving God would want me to.
__
About Mike Chan: I was born and raised in and around Chicago, where I attended small Catholic schools before joining the CU Community. I am a third-year student majoring in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) with a minor in Biochemistry, and plan on attending medical school. In addition to academia, I am passionate about music, have played the violin, guitar, and piano, and am an avid concertgoer.